In Napoli, putting mozzarella in the fridge is reasonable grounds for divorce. To pour wine for your neighbour at table with the bottle held in your upturned palm is mob code for 'Your time's up, pal'; the ingredient that turns meat and tomato sauce into Neapolitan ragu is love. These and everything you ever wanted to know about olive oil, the exact origins of the Margherita pizza and how to cook a tasty fish supper on an oxyacetylene lamp are the kinds of thing you learn on a Diane Seed cooking course.

Thirty-two years ago, advised to spend some time in the sun for her health, Seed closed her eyes and stuck a pin in a map of Europe. Her aim took her to Terrachina, just south of Rome, where began two love affairs - one with a handsome Italian gynaecologist, the other with Italy. Soon, she moved to Rome. She spent 15 years teaching English, while pursuing her untrained love of cooking in every market, shop and restaurant she could find. In 1987, her book Top 100 Pasta Sauces sold a million copies and has been followed by eight titles on Italian and Indian cookery. She has become Italian food expert for Marks & Spencer and works for the International Olive Oil Council.

Seed realised that the network of friends and colleagues she had built up across the country made her uniquely placed to offer tours exploring the authentic cookery on which she is now an authority. Four years ago, she put on her first trip to the 'heel' of Italy, and now offers trips to Puglia (Greek influence, the best pasta, great veg), Rome (seasonal selections from all over the country), Sicily (wildly diverse influences - French, Arab, Spanish) and Campania, taking in the Amalfi coast and Naples. It was on the latter trip that I joined Seed and 14 tourists from Australia, America and the UK, with a range of foodie credentials - from restaurant writers to world shopping champions with a taste for culture and a great meal.

After a welcome dinner at Seed's apartment in a Roman palazzo, we moved to our mountain base, in Sant'Agata Sui Due Golfi. This region traditionally has a 'Mediterranean' diet, rich in vegetables, pasta, fish and olive oil, much trumpeted for the health benefits 'discovered' by US professor Ancel Keyes. 'The idea of the happy peasant skipping around the Italian hills bursting with health has become something of a legend,' says Seed, 'and that kind of diet is now more the domain of privileged Americans and Australians. Trattorias serving that traditional, simple cooking are dying out in Italy's cities. But I have found family-run places which hand secret recipes down from generation to generation.'

Our first lesson, in the kitchen of a secluded seafront restaurant at the end of an unmade road, had as its centrepiece a fish simply baked in a huge crust of rock salt and drizzled with an olive oil and lemon juice dressing. More controversial, however, was the pasta course, the regional speciality of spaghetti con zucchini. Two families have confidentially claimed authorship of this famous recipe to Seed, and we came no closer to knowing its secrets that night. As we left the restaurant, she said with a sigh: 'They left something out of the zucchini sauce on purpose. That's how much rivalry there is here. Oh well, shan't ask them to teach that again.'

The next day, our teacher was another family-trained local restaurateur, the sister-in-law of our hostess from the night before. As she showed us how to prepare green tomato and pecorino sauce, tomato and aubergine sauce, an antipasti selection, huntsman's-style chicken and a salad, she rolled her eyes good-naturedly at our tale of the great zucchini swindle and gave her version of the story. 'When my restaurant closed for a year for refurbishment,' she told us, 'I helped out in their kitchen. The chefs watched over my shoulder and stole my secret touches. But they made sure I never saw exactly what they were doing!'

Other excursions included a trip to a tiny bungalow in a mountain village, boasting a Tardis-like handmade mozzarella plant in the front room. The hands of the family who run it are alarmingly scarlet from years of plunging them into near-boiling water to work the just-fermented cheese into its characteristic texture. A batch of the local hooch, limoncello, was prepared for us, and a trip to a food market in central Naples had half our group transfixed as a feisty little octopus made repeated breaks for freedom from his washing-up bowl on a seafood stall. Alan, we called him.

Afternoons off allowed excursions to many nearby hotspots - Capri, Sorrento, Amalfi, Positano and Ravello are all within easy reach. There were even a few opportunities to dress up of an evening, with visits to two of the swankiest restaurants in the area - one of which, Sant'Agata's triple-starred Michelin Don Alfonso, provided a spectacular seven-course blowout on our last night. Not that Seed has sold out her peasant side. 'This isn't trendy cooking,' she says. 'I can't bear pretension about food.'

But the trip's greatest asset is Seed's own encyclopaedic knowledge of everything from the region's mythological significance to the best gelati café in Sorrento, to the slightly racy rumours about the lineage of the Oriental-looking chef in the next village. Being in the party of 'La Signora Inglese', as she is known across Italy, guarantees you at least an extra helping of charm and, more often than not, an extra course or two.

As she prepared to drop us off in Naples for some sightseeing, Seed pointed out a famous cake shop.'The first cakes sold in Naples were made in convents and sold to raise money for the church,' she told us. 'It's said that the nuns would spread out the flour, eggs and sugar mixture on marble benches and sit on the dough, chanting as they worked it with their bare cheeks.'

Fact file

Diane Seed hosts six-night trips in Campania on 14 October and 4 November this year. The £1,200 price includes accommodation, transport within Italy and all meals except one evening, but does not include flights.

About this article

See Naples and fry

This article appeared on p6 of the Observer Escape section of the Observer
on Saturday 23 June 2001.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 13.03 EDT on Sunday 24 June 2001.
It was last modified at 13.03 EST on Thursday 22 February 2007.
It was first published at 19.00 EST on Tuesday 21 November 2006.